For starters, bulk copying a person’s documents without their approval sounds like mass copyright violation.

Since the user did not approve it, it sounds like mass copyright violation to me.

Actually in the old days a lot of “disruption” was basically removing middlement: for example putting a newspaper online avoids having to pay a commission to the newspaper stand.

It’s just that in the last 2 decades it’s mostly been Regulatory Avoidance instead of removing middlemen: basically exploiting new technology and a gap in existing legislation to avoid regulation altogether, such as how Uber’s service is not legally a Taxi Service but rather a Driven Rental Car Service because people “book” them rather than physically hailing one on the street and similary AirBnB is not a Hostel, it’s a Short-Term Let Service because of how you have to book upfront.

You also see a lot of leveraging of Networking Effects and brand name (both anti-competitive Market imperfections, especially the former) to quash small operators without actually delivering significant improvements, for example in food delivery or even Social Media (if you consider normal websites as “small operators”).

Once cabbies got their own apps, the only market advantage Uber had was lower costs because of not obbeying regulations, which wasn’t there in those contries which forced Uber to obbey the same regulations as cabbies.

Which is both a good point and quite a different scenario from what’s being illustrated here which is just Uber’s version of a taxi stand, and literally the final brick in them going around taxi regulations.

The problem was never when Uber provided something that wasn’t being provided, it was when they provided a regulation-free version (early on their drivers were wholly unvetted and many would be driving people around in cars with no commercial insurance and hence the Insurer could deny paying compensation to the passenger in the case of accident) of what was already in the Market by using the laws for Rental Cars With Drivers to avoid the laws for Taxis.

Their business model from the start was just gaining an advantage against established players using Regulatory Avoidance, even if in some situations they did provide a better service rather than just an unregulated version (and hence cheaper because all kinds of costly rules done for the safety of customers weren’t obbeyed) of the same thing.

Uber has variable pricing, whilst taxis do not (it’s the whole point of the meter, which is why shady types try to “play games” with it).

Nowadays taxis will also take credit cards (I guess in some countries maybe some don’t).

Agree on the superiority of having a rating system, though.

Not in the EU it doesn’t, unless they got the user to review that Agreement and agree before the sale took place.

After the implicit contract which is the sale has been agreed to by both parties (the buyer gave the money, the seller took it), one of the parties can’t force the other party to agree to a new contract before they’re allowed to get the contractual benefits of the original contract (i.e. the buyer getting to use the product they bought, the seller getting to use the money they got).

It doesn’t matter if the seller has such power de facto - legally they most definitelly can’t blackmail the buyer by denying them their side of the contractual rights they got in the Act of Sale by blocking their use of the product they bought until they agree to a new Agreement from the seller.

Real Life^TM is a Role-Playing Multiplayer Game with the best graphics resolution in the Industry.

Sadly, it suffers from severe game play balance problems, most notably that most of game play time is spent in boring tasks which should’ve been simplified into just the core gameplay element for a better gaming experience, plus it’s heavy reliance on grinding, to the point that most players literally have to spend at least 8h per day in the game grinding merelly to not lose the game.

And don’t get me started on it’s Pay To Play elements.

To add to both your posts, a pretty good general rule is: don’t confuse famous with knowledgeable.

The only knowledge they’ve proven is of “how to become known in a specific domain”, which at least in social media is mainly about self-promotion (and more generally it’s about grifter skills) rather than specific domain knowledge.

So yeah, the likes of Andrew Tate will do it by looking confident whilst telling tons of bullshit and plenty of female influencers will do it by looking good and showing some skin.

It’s my impression that it’s actually a lot more about national pride for Spain than about Gibraltar’s fiscal paradise status, since Gibraltar as not part of a member country can just be treated the same as any other offshore fiscal paradise, such as the Bahamas, which includes it being added to black lists. In this day and age, it’s not geographical proximity that matters when it comes to fiscal paradises.

This makes sense since Britain too doesn’t really gain much from having possession of Gibraltar so holding on to it is mainly a question of national pride for the UK - it would be strange if Spain’s motivations were wildly different.

PS: Also it’s funny how during the Leave campaign a lot of the “reason” why the EU would give Britain quasi-membership rights (without the responsabilities) after leaving the EU were a lot like this, about how those other countries or interests inside those countries would do it because they stood to gain monetarilly from it in the short term. All that turned out to be mainly wishful thinking and a serious misreading of the motivations of the leaders and people in said other countries.

Just found it funny how there are still people around thinking other countries are mainly motivated by the short term gains in sovereignty affairs, even whilst Britain itself again and again keeps doing things motivated by national pride when it comes to such affairs - one would’ve expected that “they’re a lot like us” would somehow been figured out by now.

Well, if you tip because you care enough about the person on the other side, you might want to try and come up with a way to leave them a tip somehow so that there is no risk it’s taken away from them, assuming that you can. Put $5 under the rug and let them know, or something.

If you can’t, you can’t, and I’m hardly going to criticize you for not wanting to catch an airborne infectious disease.

I was pretty miffed in the UK (years ago) when it came out that lots of companies (there it was mainly restaurants) were just keeping the tip money when people payed by card and filled-in a tip amount, so I very much made an effort to as much as possible make sure the actual people got the tip directly - even if I stood out from the crowd by doing it - as I don’t see the point in tipping the company.

When I tip the driver in a delivery I literally just give them cash when they deliver (and only if they actually arrive with some promptness, not if they come half an hour late with a cold pizza).

It’s a habit I got into when living in the UK because there, like in the US, lots of companies just take the “tip” money and keep it if you tip whilst paying with card.

Granted, I like to pay stuff with cash, both for privacy reasons and because it has actually been shown that people in average spend less if they pay in cash (something to do with the feeling of giving something physical away), so I almost always have some cash to pay and tip.

It would be especially appropriate for a horse funeral were the animal was used to bring contraband over the Sierra Morena or was called Cielito Lindo

Not really in a bolt tightenning domain, but I have done technical interviews for a lot of devs including junior ones, and them asking all those questions about the task is something I would consider a very good thing.

At least in my domain the first step of doing a good job is figuring out exactly what needs to be done and in what conditions, so somebody who claims to have some experience who when faced with a somewhat open ended question like this just jumps into the How without first trying to figure out the details of the What is actually a bad sign (or they might just be nervous, so this by itself is not an absolute pass or fail thing).

I’m sorry but the UK is the entity we’re talking about, not actual persons - individuals can’t join or leave the EU on their own hence it’s the actions of the actual formal nation state that get judged when it comes to joining or leaving the EU.

Consider the possibility that it’s your nationalist feelings (and given the huge role of British Nationalism in Brexit that’s not actually a good thing) that are making you confuse the country and the actions of it by the hand of it’s elective representatives, with you yourself and people like you - the actions of the nation never really represent all people in that nation and it’s not really healthy (IMHO) to identify yourself with The Nation.

People being critical of a country seldom means they’re critical of everybody in that country, unless they’re nationalist far-right morons, in which case their problem is a lot bigger than merely talking in an acerbic way about a nation.

Indeed.

As the vote for new EU Members is one with veto rules, my bet is that it’s going to be an opportunity for all manner of EU members to make demands, such as Spain demanding Gibraltar back.

If I remember it correctly, members of the EFTA such as Norway have a vote with veto, and during the Brexit Deal negotiations they weren’t at all keen on having the UK joining the EFTA because it’s far bigger than all the others and would likely dominate.

The “conservatives” nowadays are just another far-right party, only they’re led by posh twats instead of rabble rousers and unlike in most of Europe (with noteable exceptions being Hungary and maybe Austria), in the UK are mainstream rather than fringe.

Nowadays they don’t really do “conserving”.

All it takes is for one member country, no matter how tiny, to say “No” and it’s no, and in some countries like Belgium even a single region (say, “mighty” Walonia) can block it.

For example, I expect that Spain will want Gibraltar back as a condition for a Yes on a UK Membership vote.